For many years, I wrote a small weekly ad for my consignment shop in our local newspapers. Since I didn’t have a lot of ad money in my shop budget, I had to make every word count. I can see her still: Billy, my ad rep. A staunchly unimaginative-seeming middle-aged woman in Talbots’ finest, right down to the penny loafers. She looked like a high-school English teacher, and maybe she had been, because she gave me the best advertising/ promotional piece copywriting idea I ever got. And once I heard it, it was so obvious!

Write your headline last.

After all, Billy said in her dry manner, You have to show ’em you’re saying something IN-ter-est-ing. If you don’t catch them in the headline, they won’t read. But you don’t KNOW what’s IN-ter-est-ing ’til you write it, do ya? So don’t tell ’em what you’re gonna tell ’em till you’ve told ’em.

And boy, has Billy hovered over my shoulder, my copywriting angel, ever since. Ya gotta make it IN-ter-est-ing.

For “headline”, if you’re writing for an e-audience, substitute the subject line of a blog post, the first sentence of a Facebook update, or, in this example, the e-mail subject line.

Here’s what happens when you write your headline/ subject line first.

You’re all busy thinking about the details, and when you’ll schedule your email to go out, so you give it a title that, at this point, makes sense to you. But what makes sense when you’re working, often ends up as a really, really unmotivating headline. Like this one from today in my email in-box:

Pretty boring, huh? “Feb. 7th – Feb. 10th”? Why would I even bother to open an email like this?

Now, let’s take a look at the actual email, once someone overcomes their ennui and actually opens the missive:

Take a look at the facts she has at hand. (I’ve highlighted them for you. ) I mean, what more perfect subject line… could there be, with all those 2s?

• 22 years in business
• ’12 Award
• 2 locations

not to mention that this shop sells 2ndhand stuff (which the reader knows subconsciously, right?)

Shoot. If I’d been writing this email, I would have realized that, and given some thought to

subject lines like

Seeing Double or We’re overwhelmed with 2s! or Double your Fun or It’s just TOO TWO!….

anything but a date span. Then all I’d have to do is add, to my already-written message, a lead-in first sentence like There’s so much to see at our two locations that we’re having a party as we head into our 22nd year…

Try it next time you’re communicating with your fans, followers, customers. Write what you want them to know, then develop, from that message, a headline that will lead them into

discovering what you want them to know!